III

Black Mountain, a century later

(That hooligan always had to be fighting with someone,
but something finally whipped him for good. He won't
say what it was, so everyone guesses. But who knows?)


We were strolling through a lustrous rented lawn at dusk.

The oysters are wonderful.

Well, they're for you. We changed everything around when you said you'd be here. We were going to get married last month to completely different people but that would've still been August and we wouldnt have been able to have oysters for you, she said. You always did like them better than anyone I ever met. And I really am glad you came.

Still a salt-marsh Cracker.

Can it, Mister. Nobody's bought that Cracker business in 20 years. It's hard to believe I fell for it.

Children were chasing about underfoot, ruining expensive new party clothes with grass stains and wild cheer. It was a loud, happy, messy affair.

You haven't changed, Rose.

Well, of course I have, I just look the same. That's what they pay me for. Good God you have, though.

I'm aware of that, thanks immensely.

It's good, it is, just kind of hard to get used to. You don't look like a drawing anymore. You look like you'll probably wake up looking the same.

Yeah, I probably will.

But your old nose was lots better.

She shook her head and I shrugged. I didn't have a whole lot of say in the matter, Rosalie. My hands were in my pockets and she slipped her hand through the crook of my arm.

Do you think I've done okay?

Of course I do. You weren't famous enough to suit yourself back then. But you're wearing it well.

Do you know which one made me just about too sad to do?

Which? No, no I dont. But Im not, ah, familiar with all of them.

With any of them? I shook my head. She gave out a belly-laugh. You are the strangest man Ive ever met.

I don't go to the movies.

Not even your own?

Especially not my own.

They say you won't come back even for a quick trip.

Then they're right.

More freeze tag surrounded us. Jesus, how many kids do you have, honey?

Stop it, she said. Does she know you're here?

I nodded.

I've talked to her, you know. Three or four times, checking on you. Those postcards you sent to my sisters house from the whatever, Caspian? Sea scared me pretty good. Scared me enough to call. She doesn't hate me any more. She said she'll never like me much, but she doesn't hate me.

I know she doesn't Rose.

I still hate her.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Do you write about her?

No.

Do you write about me?

No, Rosalie. I'm sorry, not in a long time. I don't write about anyone any more.

Well, you're going to tonight.

No I'm not.

She didn't precisely smile. Oh, yes you are. Youve got a second chance, Mister. Last one, dont mess it up. When it's time for the toast,

youre going to stand up and be eloquent and poetic and you're not going to make me cry. I'm going to nod at you and you're going to do the right thing and that's exactly what you're going to do.

Not long afterward, I tried to ease on away. I left the party around the tables in the garden and slipped through the door of the inn and out across the huge front porch. Before I could find my car, there came a tap on my shoulder: the groom. He was deeply tanned, perfectly fit and looked far more Southern California than his native Gaffney, South Carolina. Not leaving already are you?

No, no. Just walking around to smoke. I told Rosie I'd stick around for dessert and, you know, everything.

Good. Wasn't any dealing with her but that you'd be here. Look, hey: you probably wouldn't know this, but she really doesn't care much for that name.

Well, ah, thanks. Youre right: I didnt know that. You got a light?

Not me. Thats a nasty habit I never picked up.

***

Rosalie's sister tapped a silver fork on a crystal water tumbler to quiet the gathered flock. Champagne appeared and one of the crisp, silent servers poured mineral water for me. The famous bride gave me a stern nod. I stood up. I looked at my hands, but I hadn't written anything on them.

I didn't have a pen, I said, and she beamed. But a quiet voice suggested to me to polish the future with the soft rag of the past.

She casts a light on a dark path. I recall the sea-waves cold. I recall the pretty fruit we stole. I was given the grace untold to follow a beacon back to the shore, and to realize that her light now belongs to all our eyes.

She was crying but she was happy. I left as soon as good form allowed and I drove downhill, quietly, alone, a blurred drawing looking for a wall in a home.

IV

Winston-Salem, the present

(Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. Go then in peace.)

This road isn't new, but the pavement is barely cool.
It doesn't lead to Damascus or even Tyre, and it
follows a very shy logic. It was once dirt, of course,
as comfortable and well-used as a sad man's chuckle.
And it ambled through those few turned fields beyond
the glance of the town. A Quaker lives on this road.

The farms and the farmers and their
Cottages are somewhere else now.

A rough bunch, fond of horses and whiskey and flesh
and sidearms, grown wealthy from taming the Deadly
Nightshade, built themselves an unlikely mansion
of splendid restraint out of the cornfields and scratchyards.
But then they went and scraped out a golf links on their vast
front lawn, an easy canter from their polo field out by the lane.

The farmers and their braided wives
Long ago left their cottages behind.

But a Quaker lives on Polo Road within a white picket fence,
under an old-growth white oak, in a farmhouse everyone forgot
to tear down. The roof is green tin. Little here is as it appears.
The weathervane is aimed in every wrong direction, looks quite
old, but is not. He likes it that way. The Quaker's hair is purely
silver and nearly never combed. It seems wild and a bit insulted.

This Friend is nearly deaf but he talks
To himself at night, alone in the garden.

He asks himself the Queries and makes his mindful lists as the
Friends are charged to do. For years, he has struggled to wrest
songs from seed catalogues. Viburnum and verbena, quince and
hollyhock, portulaca and Castor beans. Elephant ears and Penguin
gourds, Joe-Pye Weed and the Naked Lady Lily. Solomons Seal and
maidenhair, ghost plants, jade, Rose of Sharon and swamp jasmine.

He has begun to hear the music of the
spheres and his eyes have been restored.
He found his long-forgotten pen in a pocket of his grandfather's
linen fishing jacket. He wore it comfortably and with considerable
hope to deliver food to the old and the poor on Drewry Street,
where once before he'd seen a beautiful foreign woman counting
out meals for widows and beggars. His one small, silent prayer
was only that he could see her again and hear her laugh and sigh.

He painted a life's-worth of empty bottles
And hung them from an aromatic cedar tree.

Maybe she'll wonder and ride by.
I dont know what will happen,
I dont mind waiting to see. She
can take her time and she can
have mine if she finds some use.
My eyes have been revived.
The ocean I see is clear, clean and blue.

It was fear that drowned
and love that survived.
Maybe, maybe she'll drive by.